Roku setup

[jazmin8]

My parents had a Sony Bravia TV, however they didn't like the Google Smart TV functionality. It was too slow and crashed far too frequently. To work around this, I bought my parents the Roku 4K streaming stick. Since they use WiFi, I felt the stick would be the better way to go rather than paying more than double for the streaming box. Well, the streaming stick was working fine for a few months. Then one day when my dad was watching, the HDMI port suddenly went out. Picture went black and no signal message showed on the screen. So my dad switched the stick to another port and it worked briefly until that port went out too. Then he tried another and that went out after a few minutes. Now, NONE of the HDMI ports work and the TV is no good anymore.

Is it possible that the Roku streaming stick shorted out the HDMI ports since the stick is directly connected to the ports? Or do you think it's just the TV failing and the Roku stick had nothing to do with it?

[JWS9518]

There are a number of things that can cause issues with HDMI ports.  Repeated cable insertion and removal can cause bent or broken pins in the port or the device/HDMI cable, physical damage to the cable or ports from being bumped or dropped, dust accumulation within the HDMI port, poor quality HDMI cables or cables that use an old protocol, or even excessive force when plugging the HDMI cable/device into the port.  Electrical surges or even static electricity can damage the sensitive electronics inside the port.  It is possible but not likely that a device like a Roku can create an issue with a power spike.  Damage by a Roku to an HDMI port is more likely caused by improperly inserting or removing the device from the port than by any surge caused by it.

If not caused by physical damage to the ports, then it is likely that a surge coming from the TV or the outlet the TV damaged the control board that controls the HDMI ports.  There are a lot of factors that can contribute to that, including the age and brand of the TV and quality of components they used for that model, the wear and tear on the ports themselves with devices being used/inserted/removed in them, how clean your electricity is in your area, in terms of power spikes/surges, and whether you use a surge protector and/or home house surge to protect from those spikes.  

My area here gets a number of short outages, 2 seconds or less, that causes a number of surges, which has over time damaged components in a home receiver and fridge I have, even with surge protecters and a whole house surge as they do not provide 100 percent foolproof protection.  I have added surges that keep the power off for 4 minutes after an outage to protect from those little spikes from damaging the components, which adds a layer of protection to those sensitive components.

It sounds like your parents' TV had a board that was starting to fail and then failed completely after trying to use the other ports. 

You could check to see if there is an issue with the Roku by plugging it into a different TV that you know has working HDMI ports and see if the Roku device itself is failing or has an issue as they like any other electronic device can fail due to power spikes or other electronic failures.   Or you can try plugging a different HDMI device (such as a Blu-ray player or cable box) into the TV and see if those ports work with that device.